Elevators are used for transporting persons or items in a vertical direction. Moving components such as an elevator car or a counterweight may travel within an elevator shaft. As such moving components may travel along significant heights and may transport, inter alia, persons and therefore very strict security and safety requirements have to be fulfilled.
For example, if an elevator car gets into an over-speed condition whereby it exceeds a permissible speed during normal operation of the elevator, emergency braking actions have to be effected in order to securely avoid for example any damages or even injuries to passengers of the elevator. In an extreme case, e.g. a failure of an elevator engine or even a breakage of elevator suspension means, an emergency braking action has to be effected in order to securely avoid a drop or fall of the elevator car which could otherwise result in a fatal crash.
Various approaches for establishing a braking capability for an elevator arrangement have been proposed. Some of these approaches may also be used for emergency braking actions. Most of these conventional approaches use electromagnetic brakes in order to decelerate a moving component of an elevator arrangement. For example, Japanese document JP 2011-057316 A relates to an elevator with an emergency braking control function. JP 2011-184141 relates to an electromagnetic brake device and to a mechanism for particularly adjusting a braking force of the brake.
As an alternative, WO 2014/177494 A1 describes a hydraulic braking system for use in a passenger transport installation such as an elevator, an escalator or a moving walkway.
While such conventional braking arrangement may fulfil safety requirements for braking actions, i.e. may decelerate a moving component of an elevator arrangement which has come into an over-speed condition within a sufficiently short period of time, most of such conventional braking arrangement tend to exert an instantaneous jerk for example onto an elevator car upon such braking action. Such jerk may be inconvenient for a passenger accommodated within such car or may, in worst case, even harm such passenger.
Accordingly, there may be a need for a braking arrangement for an elevator arrangement avoiding such inconvenience or even harm. Particularly, there may be a need for a braking arrangement which may avoid significant jerk on an elevator's moving component as a result to a braking action, particularly an emergency braking action. Furthermore, there may be a need for a method for controlling a braking arrangement for an elevator arrangement fulfilling such requirements, for a computer program product enabling controlling such method and for a computer-readable medium storing such computer program product.